We needed nothing great to make us happy.  A flower or a bird could make us merry for several hours, not to speak of the upholsterer bee.  I shall never forget what pleasure I had once on his account.

The bee had been in the spider-web as usual, and the spider had as usual helped him out; but it had been fastened so securely that it had had to buzz a dreadfully long time and had been very tamed and subdued when it had flown away.  I bent forward to see if the spider-web had suffered much damage.  Fortunately it had not; but on the other hand a little yellow larva was caught in the web, a little threadlike monster, which consisted of only jaws and claws, and I was agitated, really agitated, at the sight of it.

I knew them, those May-bug larvae, that in thousands crawl up on the flowers and hide themselves under their petals.  Did I not know them and yet admire them, those bold, cunning parasites, that sit hidden and wait, only wait, even if it is for weeks, until a bee comes, in whose yellow and black down they can hide.  And did I not know their hateful skill just when the little cell-builder has filled a room with honey and on its surface laid the egg from which the rightful owner of the cell and the honey will come forth, just then to creep down on the egg and with careful balancing sit on it as on a boat; for if they should come down into the honey; they would drown.  And while the bee covers the thimble-like cell with a green roof and carefully shuts in its young one, the yellow larva tears open n the egg with its sharp jaws and devours its contents, while the egg-shell has still to serve as craft on the dangerous honey-sea.

But gradually the little yellow larva grows flat and big and can swim by itself on the honey acid drink of it, and in the course of time a fat, black beetle comes out of the bee-cell.  It is certain that this is not what the little bee wished to effect by its work, and however cunningly and cleverly the beetle may have behaved, it is nevertheless nothing but a lazy parasite, who deserves no sympathy.

And my bee, my own little, industrious bee, bad flown about with such a yellow hanger-on in its down.  But while the spider had spun round with it, the larva had loosened and fallen down on the spider-web, and now the big, orange spider came and gave it a bite and transformed it in a second into a skeleton without life or substance.

When the little bee came again, its humming was like a hymn to life.

“Oh, thou beauteous life,” it said.  “I thank thee that happy work among roses and sunshine has fallen to my lot.  I thank thee that I can enjoy thee without anxiety or fear.

“Well I know that spiders lie in wait and beetles steal, but happy work is mine, and brave freedom from care.  Oh, thou beauteous life, thou glorious existence!”